Total Eclipse of the ?? (Heart) .. no the sun

[ruggercsc]

Watched eclipse from our driveway in lawn chairs.  We had about 45 seconds of totality.  We had a cloud that broke about 7 or 8 minutes from totality.  Downtown Nashville, where there are thousands of people, had a cloud over it for the totality.  I am glad we stayed put.  It was pretty cool seeing the totality and the diamond ring, beads, aurora around the blacked out sun.

I can give someone a deal on some slightly used eclipse glasses.

 

[MetsFan]

This is what we got to see in MA

 

[MetsFan]

 

[Road Guy]

the previous pic is a good one, I couldn't get my phone through the eclipse glasses to work out as well as I would have hoped.

 

[MetsFan]

Yeah, it wasn't working for me either, but then a co-worker told me to put it in manual mode to raise the ISO level and make the shutter speed faster.

 

[kevo_55]

We got rain when we should have had our peak.

I just watched it on NASA's stream.

 

[roadwreck]

I took the day off and drove up to the Georgia-South Carolina border (normally only an hour north of Atlanta) to see the totality.  It took us closer to 2 hours to get there.  Waze took us the scenic route taking backroads so the drive wasn't terrible.  

Taking the day off and driving 3 hours (2 up and 1 back down) was totally worth it.  Totality is really cool.  The lead up to the eclipse is cool, but it's nothing compared to being able to look directly at the sun (with no glasses) during the full eclipse and seeing the corona around the moon.  Crazy.  In some respects I sort of wish I'd taken my DSLR so I could have tried to take some pictures, but I'm also glad I wasn't messing with my camera during the full eclipse because it only lasted a minute and it was really cool to watch.  It's an experience I'm glad I took the time to enjoy and would totally do it again given the opportunity. 

 

[Road Guy]

check out some of these traffic maps.. my wife said traffic hasn't moved in almost an hour and it looks like one of those movies where people are trying to escape the meteor strike -people camped out on the side of the road waiting it out.. said the small town they were in was even out of gas most places..

 

[roadwreck]

Yea, sticking to the interstate the whole way up would have been miserable.  Fortunately we were off on country roads and were moving.  Driving through cow pastures and small towns is at least interesting even if it's the long way to go.  We stopped just south of the GA/SC border, so we were on the southern side of the totality, and once it was over hopped quickly back on the road heading south to get ahead of the rest of the folks who were north of us and heading back to town.  Only took us an hour to get back home. 

 

[Road Guy]

that's not too bad..

there's really only 2 roads that head north from Denver to Casper in all honesty.  She went over closer to Laramie which was "supposed" to have less people than the Casper area but it was still pretty bad. There is a road that cuts through down to Fort Collins from there but she said it looked worse.. They haven't been able to send any pics cause there just aint much damn service in that part of the world!

 

[wilheldp_PE]

We got about 98% totality in Louisville.  One guy had approved glasses and shared them with the 4 or 5 of us that were interested in seeing it.  At the height of it, it was a weird kind of dark outside.  Kinda like dusk, but with the sun at that angle, it didn't look like dusk.  Also, 2% of the sun puts out a surprising amount of light.  At 98%, I was expecting it to be pretty dark, but it really wasn't.

 

[roadwreck]

These are a friend's photos of the totality.  That's really what it looks like, no filters or camera tricks.  The difference between 98% and 100% is indescribable.  Believe me, I was a skeptic and this morning when I saw all the traffic I kind of thought since we'd get 98% here at home that it probably wouldn't be worth it to see 100%.  I was so wrong.  It's incredible to look up at the "sun" and look directly at it (without glasses) and to see the corona around the moon is mesmerizing.  It looks like the moon is on fire.  It's just crazy to see.  And to see stars in the middle of the day.  It's really crazy. 

 

[Supe]

98% where I was, was very meh.

Buddy of mine lives in the boonies of NC, and I guess either apple or google maps was trying to reroute people through his front yard to help skirt traffic.  He said it was such a parking lot, he actually had people begging to use his bathroom.  The Mrs. and Junior went to SC to her father's house to watch, which is just under two hours away.  Took them 5 hours to get home, and that was leaving around 7PM.

 

[goodal]

We saw 100% in Paducah, Ky.  This is the best my iphone with the special glasses held over it could do.  Went very dark and cicadas started up instantly.  The most unexpected things was the shadows of the moon craters whizzing by.  It was very noticeable on a white surface.

 

 

[Supe]

Cicadas didn't do much, but birds went absolutely batshit.

 

[snickerd3]

car alarms in the parking lot were going off at the time of totality...and not near each other.  it was weird

 

[ruggercsc]

At totality you could hear the cicada's, crickets, and all the streetlights started flickering.  I didn't notice the birds.

 

[MA_PE]

So relative trying to get out of Nashville yesterday ended up bwing at the airport for 9 hours and sitting on the tarmac in 2 3 hour shifts before his flight got cancelled altogether and no he did not get to see the eclipse.  He was supposed to leave at 10AM and they jerked him around until they officially cancelled at 7:00PM.  supposedly they were in line to take off but were left stranded on the tarmac by air traffic control until the flight crew timed out for fatigue regulations.  Of course the flight cost was 3X the normal because of the eclipse rush.  He was not pleased.

 

[jeb6294]

We're going to be close to all the chaos during the next eclipse in 2024.  The west side of Cincinnati is going to be on the southern limit of the total eclipse.  The center will be just south of Indianapolis so hopefully most people will be trying to camp out over there.  Guess I should buy up all the leftover eclipse glasses now so I'll be ready to gouge people in 7 years.

 

[Flyer_PE]

It was worth the trip to see it.  Cape Girardeau opened up their brand new shiny "Sportsplex" and offered free parking for the event.  The building was air conditioned with bathrooms and food service.  The parking lot was full but not over-crowded and the drive back to my mother's house was normal.  I have no idea how nuts it was in Perryville (center-line) but the traffic heading there didn't seem abnormally heavy from our vantage point.

We started driving North three hours after it was over and didn't hit any traffic until we were 30 miles North of St. Louis on I-55.  Don't know if the congestion was eclipse related or an accident but it kept getting worse so we wound up taking back roads to get to our hotel in Springfield.  Drove the rest of the way home today.

The center-line of the next one goes right over my sister's house.  We're planning to watch it from their deck.